1. I took a hula hooping for beginners class yesterday, and I hooped up a storm. It was fun! I borrowed a big, weighted hoop and I’m going to practice my mad hooping skilz over the weekend.

2. As I’m reading about potential pathways for “food addiction,” I can’t help but feel that the focus on childhood obesity creates more “food addicts” than it means to — by starting from deprivation, and then consuming more when the food is available, then the need for more food (fatty, sweet) to satisfy the craving. Also — alienation, ridicule, abuse, bullying — lead to a situation where comfort and consolation are needed, and if it’s the family itself that it is alienating and ridiculing, where would a child have to turn? I am not saying that all children who are fat are food addicted. I’m saying that the pathways that respond to food can be influenced by emotions and situations, which may be modifiable, more than our brain wiring. A food environment that provides plenty of different kinds of foods in satisfying amounts, and a stable, supportive emotional setting where a child feels accepted for who they are, with limits set on behaviors but no shaming about the impulses that lead to unwanted behaviors — that’s likely to be supporting the development of healthy pathways to rewards.

I’ll see if I can capture a video of me doing it. I’m still sore — my ribs hurt where the hoop banged against them, I’m waiting a day or so to try again.

My teacher lives in Tacoma, and she’s done some hoop-fest things in Seattle. I’ll ask her for some names of hooping opportunities in Seattle.
Hope you are well. Reminds me to stop by your spot and read up.

I definitely agree that food restriction and the demonization of certain foods can help children to develop a disordered attitude towards eating.

I also agree that we must strive to create a food environment based on generally healthy eating based on, as you say, “plenty of different kinds of foods in satisfying amounts”. This is the way to encourage health on an individual and a population level. It will not, however, make us all slim. And so the obesity panic continues while good health is left to die by the side of the road, sacrificed to the god of skinniness.